Solace on the Road
by Black Rien
Summary: My name is Solace, or at least, it is now. It was something else before, but that hardly matters. As far as I'm concerned, the girl I used to be died that night trying to save her little brother, died a horrible death and was reborn a monster because she made the mistake of fighting monsters.
1. The Big Mistake of '88

**Solace on the Road**  
Chapter 1: _"The Big Mistake of '88"_

* * *

_"This is a big mistake_  
_And every soon you ll know_  
_Why your whole family told you not to go_  
_Where everybody said to stay_

_This is a big mistake_

_And very soon you'll know_  
_Why your whole family_  
_Told you not to go_  
_Where everybody said to stay_  
_How could I ever think that I could feel the same caution as you_  
_When I know it's not true."_

**- Anthony Green,  
**Big Mistake

* * *

I was twenty-three when the Big Mistake happened and completely ruined my life. The year was 1988 and I was flying high, I was going to be the first person ever in my family to get into college; full scholarship, the works. I had just gotten home, grabbing my bags out of the back of the taxi cab, looking so pretty in my creamy white blouse and my dark skirt as I paid the driver and ran for the front door.

It was so dark outside, but my mom had left the lights on for me. My dad had died five years earlier of a heart condition and we still had pictures of him scattered across our house- I liked the one on the mantle best, because he was standing in our yard with me and my brother and our mom, his arms wrapped tight around us and a silly grin on his face. He looked like the happiest man in the world back then.

I dug my key out of my pocket and unlocked the front door, stepping in with flourish as I exclaimed, "Guess who's home!"

The house was still, silent, and I walked into the kitchen, waiting for my little brother David to pounce on me and shout out his typical roar to try to scare me. I dropped my bags in the entryway and snickered under my breath as I darted around the corner where he usually hid. He wasn't there. I frowned and walked until I was resting my hands on our table, looking for a trace of dinner because it was well past seven o'clock and Dave was a notoriously messy eater. The table was uncharacteristically clean.

I wondered if he and mom were upstairs, so I turned around and headed there. The second floor of our house was one part my mother's room, and the pther part storage. The walls were painted a cream colour with white trimming- it was quaint and kind of cute in its own way. There were several boxes stacked high, most of them were filled with my dad's things, the things that we couldn't bear to throw away.

My upper teeth dug into my lower lip as I breathed out through my nose. No one was here. My high heels were beginning to create an ache in my feet so I sat down on my mother's bed and undid the straps, the shoes falling onto the floor with a loud thunk. I hissed pleasantly as my fingers kneaded the sore muscles of my instep and I released a sigh as I stood up.

My feet padded softly on the floor as I turned to go back downstairs, and then I heard the noise, _"Sis!"_

I knew that voice, masculine but still high pitched like a child's. David's voice that still sounded so young even though he was already fourteen. I always teased him about that, "Davy?" I called, looking back to where the voice was coming from, "Davy, where are you?"

_"Shhh!"_ was the muffled reply, _"I'm in the closet!"_

I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms, "Seriously, Dave? Quit being silly and get out of there. And where's mom?"

I watched as he crept out of the closet, crouching over and darting his eyes left and right. When he finally looked back to me was when I noticed that something was wrong. His face was twisted and wet with tears, his shirt was torn in places and he had a long cut on his face, "S- she's _dead_, sis."

My heart thrummed steadily in my chest as I looked at his face. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the long gash going down his cheek and the blood dripping down across his chin, "What?"

He nodded, and I knew he had heard me, even though I know my voice had been nothing more than a weak murmur, "They got her, they're in the house, I couldn't get to the phone and- and I-"

He was sobbing, hiccuping and choking over his words as I rushed forward and clutched at his shoulders. He threw his arms around me and cried into my shoulder, and I wound my fingers into his dark hair like I had so many times before when he was little with my other hand wrapped around him and bunched into his shirt.

My thoughts went wild with worry, mom was hurt, someone or someones were in the house, my poor little brother was frightened half to death, and I- I had no idea what to do. I knew that dad had kept a gun underneath the mattress, but I didn't know if it was still there and even then I barely knew how to use it. I whispered consoling nonsense into David's ear as his body shook, trying to keep my own tears damned up.

He sniffled and wiped at his nose, pulling back and looking at me, "What are we gonna do?"

It took a minute to lift the mattress, but it was worth it to find the pistol. It was heavy, possessing a lethal weight where it rested in my palms. I sucked in a long breath and told David to wait in the closet, which he didn't want to do. I barked back at him that he'd be in the way and that I didn't want him to get hurt. He barked the same back at me but I was already halfway down the stairs with the gun curled into my right hand.

I sneaked through the house, praying silently to God for help, for myself and my brother. And, if she was still alive, my mom too. I was so nervous as I tiptoed into the garage that my teeth began peeling the skin off of my lips, biting and pulling at the thin flesh until, _"Ouch."_

My left hand touched gingerly at my bottom lip which stung lightly. I couldn't see to good, as the hallway to the garage was dimly lit, but when my tongue traced over the place where the pain began, I knew I was bleeding because of the sharp metallic tang that nipped at my taste buds.

I heard a low growl from behind me and turned to face… nothing.

I breathed shallowly and changed direction, facing back to the garage, only to come face-to-face with the tall, muscular form of a man. My mouth opened in a scream, but it died somewhere in my throat when he grabbed me up with one hand a threw me backwards. I hit the counter with a gasp and a groan, my back burning as I stood up and pointed the gun at the intruder, "D-don't you dare come closer!"

The man kept on walking until the lights just barely brushed his shoes. I heard a strange noise, watching as his body shook, and realized that he was _laughing _at me. And then the lights glinted against his teeth, "Oh, God."

They were long and sharp and fierce, growing out of his gums, pointing in strange directions like thick nails jammed haphazardly into wood. He stepped into the kitchen, wincing as the lights illuminated his face which, aside from the teeth, was perfectly normal. He looked like your average guy, but those teeth…

"Don't be scared," he smiled wider, seeming to delight in the way that I shook everytime I chanced a look at his fangs, "I hate killing girls, 'specially the pretty ones."

I cocked the little metal trigger on the top of the pistol, the hammer I remembered, "Stop!"

"You won't shoot me." His smirk was arrogant and terrifying, and suddenly there was a scream from upstairs. My gun was still pointed at his chest, but I couldn't help looking away, looking up to where my brother had been hiding and to where the scream had come from.

"David?!" I shouted, glancing at the man in front of me who had shoved his hands in his pockets. Another scream and I turned my head back to him, "I will shoot you if anything happens to him!"

He sighed and shook his head, his lips closing over his teeth, "Too late, love, the kid's gone," he said, and then he looked up and froze. He was staring at my mouth, his nostrils flaring wildly, and I could feel the thin line of blood trailing down over my chin, "And so are you."

His teeth bared and he rushed forward. I screamed and pulled the trigger. There was a bang and a sudden chill over my throat. There was something warm gushing over my fingers and there were someone else's fingers in my mouth. I remembered a dull pain in my neck and a loud pounding in my head.

And that was all.

When I woke up, I was laying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor, the wide-eyed, snarl mouthed corpse of my attacker to my left, and the blood soaked gun to my right. The man had a hole in his chest the size of an pecan, and I stood up.

The light was slowly creeping through the windows in the kitchen and I sighed with weariness and slumped down. I wanted to see David, to check if he was alright. I wanted to take a nice, hot shower and rinse this blood off of me. More than anything, as I fell asleep, tucked into the shadows of the counter, I wanted to clean up our blood off the floor.

With my tongue…

I learned soon after that David had died, some mother lovin' vamp had sucked him dry after finding him in the closet. I also discovered on accident that vampires existed after a few burly men and sour faced women showed up at my house and poured holy water over my hand; I still have the large, splash-shaped scar on my left palm to prove it.

The final thing that I learned was that I _was _a vampire, a damned thing that preyed on innocent people for food. And that Hunters made a pretty decent, but hard to manage, meal…

* * *

My name is Solace, or at least, it is now. It was something else before, but that hardly matters. As far as I'm concerned, the girl I used to be died that night trying to save her little brother, died a horrible death and was reborn a monster because she made the mistake of _fighting_ monsters.

Her brother was buried in a churchyard, six feet under as was customary. There was no service, no last rites or whatever you call it. Just a deep, dark hole in the earth that no preacher dared to touch. And then there's me, still alive.

Well, not really.

Welcome to the road…


	2. Me and You

**Solace on the Road  
**Chapter 2; _Me and You_

* * *

_"Like a perfect scene  
From a movie screen  
We're a dream come true  
Suited perfectly  
For eternity_

_Me and you_

_Everyday, I need you even more_  
_And the night-time too_  
_There's no way I could ever let you go_  
_Even if I wanted to."_

**Kenny Chesney,****  
**Me and You

* * *

My name wasn't always Solace, and I wasn't always the way I am today; a cold killer, willing to do anything to survive. I was a twenty-three year old girl-turned-vampire and my name was Tammy Monroe, not exactly a name to be remembered.

My first years as a vamp were the hardest; the running, the hiding, the _feeding_. Every spare bulb of light burned my eyes, sunlight made my skin peel and itch and start to crack if I stayed out too long. I spent my nights prowling the streets, chowing down on random street-goers.

I still remember the first time I really, intentionally, ate someone. He was older, maybe in his late fourties, and walking home alone in the dark. I smelled him before I saw him, a scent that I can't even bother trying to describe, stronger than any aphrodisiac. I heard the blood pumping through him, his heartbeat light and airy as he approached.

My hair was a tangled, blonde mess and my clothes were dirty, but he stopped beside me anyway. I was sitting stiff and rigid on the sidewalk, my throat burning for blood as he knelt down, "Miss, are you alright?"

His hand reached for my shoulder and I could tell by the beating of his heart that he was worried. Not because of me, but for me. _He should have been worried because of me._ No more than an inch away from my filthy, grime-covered shoulder and I had whipped my head over, sinking my fangs into his palm.

He drew back with a scream and a released his hand and lurched up, going for the throat- not of a man, but of my dinner. No, my vision didn't cloud over with red, and no, I didn't pass out and wake up to a corpse. I really wish that I didn't remember, but I did.

I remember the way that his screams had garbled into nothing as he choked on the blood that was pooling in his mouth. His terror filled eyes that stared into mine in abject horror, like he couldn't believe what was happening. And I remember most of all myself, biting into his skin again and again, sucking down his blood and enjoying every moment of it. I may have even been smiling. When I had finished, I held my hand over my blood stained mouth and scrambled backwards, scared of myself and what I was becoming.

Something glinted on his wrist, and I had almost no idea then that when I took it, I was preparing to change myself forever. It was a thin band of metal, iron or somesuch, with one solitary word stamped across the front. Well, more like it had been weathered in with an old screwdriver, but the word was there all the same.

_SOLACE_

* * *

I had been wandering from town to town for a little over a year, taking only what I needed from each and then moving on. It was lonely living. Eventually, I found a group of vamps like me holed up in a warehouse in South Dakota, barely living their unlives at all.

With myself situated in the bottom ranks, which was comprised of me and only one other because our number here was so small, ranging around thirty tops. We were in one of the bigger towns, and if one or two people disappeared every now and then, who cared? It was a big city, and people went missing all the time.

It was sad, of course it was, but we had to live. That was the one fact that I held onto with every fiber of my being, even years later. They still called me Tammy then, and teased me a lot, calling me a baby, mocking me when I blanched at the sight of a mangled cadaver before sinking my teeth in. That was back when I had some shreds of humanity left, you see.

I knew that they hated me, only for the reason that I was made by a different vamp than them. And as the days went by, I found myself caring less and less.

I had been with that group for three weeks when one of the hot shot bosses came into the warehouse, dragging a man and a woman, both of whom were gagged and bleeding. Every vamp in the joint must have been drooling when he forced them to their knees on the ground. He released them from where he had been pulling them along with rope and looked straight at me, "Tammy, c'mere."

The big vamp that called me was Darren, and damn if he wasn't the most disgusting man I'd ever met. He ran through the girls here like humans did water, like we did blood. Use 'em once and they're done, that was how he rolled. And if that wasn't enough, he hated me, ever since I'd said no. He'd go out of his way to make my life-unlife utter hell. He pushed and he shoved and he snarled and he hit, and no one seemed to care about weak little me getting all bruised and bloody.

If my heart could have beat, I would have been afraid of it jumping out of my chest as I approached him, saying nothing. He towered over me and I kept my eyes downward as he spoke, "You've been with us for awhile, but you haven't made a kill yet. Why is that, Tammy?"

I swallowed then, and anything that I might've said got jammed somewhere in my throat and I stood there stupidly, my mouth moving, but forming no words.

The big guy chuckled, one large, cold hand coming up to pat me roughly on the head, "Well, we're gonna fix that, sweetheart," he said, directing his voice to the crowd of other vampires, "Little Tammy here is gonna make her first kill tonight, maybe it'll keep her from being so squeamish all the time!"

I heard the mocking laughter from behind me, and I felt my fangs aching from where they rested just above my human teeth. I threw away my existence as Tammy that night.

He pushed me to stand in front of the man and the woman, their hands were bound harshly behind their backs and the woman was crying obnoxiously for us to let them go. I wondered if they were married, if they had kids, or someone to miss them when they were gone.

My fangs slid forward, a slick pull in my gums and a too-full feeling in my mouth. The blood in the air was heady, and I _wanted_ it. I went for the man, quick and quiet as I slit his throat with my teeth, severing his jungular. He fell backwards with a bloody thud and the woman screamed.

My mouth wasn't as messy as usual, and as the big vamp leaned in close, his body pressed tight against my own, "Now that wasn't so hard, was it Tammy?" His hands drifted over my waist in what he must have thought was a sensual manner.

I felt sick as his breath drifted across my skin, and I heard the woman shout one word, just one. And that would be the word to shape Solace out of Tammy, _"Monster!"_

You know, I think I hated him too.

My fangs prickled and I whipped around, finding cold flesh and stale blood beneath my teeth as I bit down into the vampire's shoulder. He pulled backwards with a growl, bumping into one of the iron support beams and grabbing my hair in a vice. He jerked me off of him with one hand and then let me fly with his other, a sharp backhand to my face.

I spiraled through the room, my head hitting the sheet metal walls with a dull clang. It didn't even hurt, although my face stung a bit. He came at me slowly, his pupils were dilated with fury and he cursed at me under his breath. I was slumped over, steadying myself on my feet when I noticed the other vamps. They weren't helping, they were watching.

Even the delicious allure of freshly spilled blood in the center of the floor held no appeal to them at the moment. As the man came closer, my instincts kicked in and I realized that this was no normal fight; the guy I'd bitten was head honcho around here, and attacking him must have been some sort of challenge. And here I thought only dogs play the alpha game…

He rushed me before I could get my bearings, pinning me into the wall and snarling against my collarbone. I barely noticed that he was lifting me off of the ground and raised my foot high, kicking him in his sternum and sending his back with a groan and a crack. My feet hit the floor and he growled again. His nails were enlongated and his teeth clicked against each other. I, on the otherhand, was a mix of terrified and excited; I'd never been in a fight before, not like this.

Well, seeing as I'm still alive, I guess you can imagine how the fight played out. And whether you can or not, I'm still going to tell you anyway.

It was like a weight had lifted off of my shoulders, and I felt Tammy tearing free of me. I wasn't Tammy anymore, but a monster, a killing machine. I was _made _for this. The head vamp lunged at me, but I moved right, ducking away from his clenched fists. My eyes were wide and alert as I circled around behind him and shoved his head into the wall with one hand. It was such a power rush, I've never forgotten that moment.

The drywall lining the inside of the metal, it may have even been stone, but it felt like drywall to me, gave way quickly to the force of my hand driving his head into it. Some blood covered power puffed out, and some of his blood actually began to trickle down the wall to soak into the concrete floor.

A low growl bubbled in my throat as I gripped his neck and flung him out of the wall and onto the floor. He flopped and rolled until he stopped, his face bloody and his eyes wide, and suddenly, I was standing over him. One heeled foot was pressing into his chest, just over his heart while I stared down at him. His body was twitching beneath me, like he wanted to move, but couldn't.

"T-tammy," he said with a smile, but I heard the waver in his voice, "Alright, girlie, that's enough playing, okay?"

I remembered him hitting me, kicking me as I curled up on the floor and trying not to cry. I remember him calling me filthy names, 'bitch' and 'whore' and other words that I won't repeat. And then, when the memories cleared, I saw him as he was; _beneath me_.

That was when Tammy broke for good, "Who's playing, Darren?" I asked, folding my arms over my chest and pushing my foot down slightly for emphasis. I kept pushing, and I felt the skin break. I heard him whimper as the muscles gave way to the pressure and the satisfying crack of his ribs.

He was huffing through his nose and he turned his head upwards to face the crowd angrily, shouting as his blood-wet hands scrambled for purchase on my ankle, "You sons of bitches, help me!"

I froze as I heard a select few shuffling forward, and I looked up with narrowed eyes, "Stop."

I wonder what they saw in me that made them obey with frightened eyes…

I heard Darren whisper shakily, a tiny bit of a laugh at the end of it, "You won't do it, Tammy, you're just a baby," I heard him say, my eyes drifting down to me his, "Lemme go, Tammy. We both know you can't kill me. You _can't_."

"You're right," I whispered back, leaning down and closer, intentionally pressing more weight into my legs, "Tammy can't kill you."

His eyes lit up and his fangs smiled at me, a victorious sneer, "See? I told y-"

"But Tammy's dead, Darren. I'm what's left."

I shoved down hard, my heel finally reaching mark and driving itself straight through his heart, "My name is Solace." I felt the muscle of it contract around my shoe and his hands smacking futilely against my leg. Stagnant blood squelched nastily as I drew my foot out of the shoe entirely and stepped away from the convulsing body.

All eyes were on me.

I faced straight ahead and kept walking, passing them by like they were leaves, like they were water, effortlessly weaving my way through them until I reached the back rooms. I don't think that there was ever any question about who was in charge after that.

The next evening as I awoke, curling into the barely-there warmth of the bedsheets that I didn't need, I felt different, better. And when I stepped outside of my room, I was greeted with lowered eyes and whispers, whispers calling out my name reverently.

They called me Solace…


End file.
